Our Dumb Blog

Michele just got off the phone with a guy who runs a natural health food
store up in Monument. Nathan, Steph, and Jef went up there to pick up an
order for Michele, so she was calling to tell him they were coming. Then she
added, “When they come in they’ll ask for an order for me; there’s one tall
man and two young ladies. Two of them are from Alabama and one from Georgia.
When they ask, say, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak southern. Could you get
someone to translate for me?” Michele is so evil sometimes.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything I don’t want to do. At least, not
for long.

The trick to life is enjoying whatever circumstance you’re in at the moment.
The best imaginable state of being is going to have a downside, the worst
its benefits, even if they aren’t very apparent. The same with location.
Whether I’m in Antarctica, a tropical island, or New York City, each one can
be a hell or a paradise depending on how I view it.

If you say, “If only…” you’ll never be happy. Happiness is a choice,
someone said, and I’m not sure I believe it entirely. Happiness IS
superficial. But you can’t wait for circumstances to become better, can’t
wish for things to be different. You’ll never be satisfied.

No relationship just “works”. You have to work at it. And I’m lazy.

What good is freedom if you can’t share it with somebody? What happened for
“freedom for the sake of freedom”? Hum? The greatest freedom is giving
yourself totally and irrevocably to someone who loves you more than you could
ever love anyone.

I just spent the last hour or so making brownies, wandering around the house
looking for pencils and sharpening them with my Boogie knife, and talking on
the phone. I seem to be able to sound really professional about things I
know nothing about. The phone rang and Jefiner went to pick it up. “That’ll
be Michele,” I said. When Jef got off, she looked at me in bewilderment and
asked, “How did you know it was Michele?” I grinned slightly. “Psycho,” she
muttered. I called the Bremer’s garbage pick up company because no one else
would. That meant that i had to keep asking everyone else who’d been to the
dump and back what needed to be picked up and why. Then I talked to someone
interested in Wings Like Eagles, even though I’m not going to be working here
this summer and have very little knowledge about this year’s details about
camp. Then Michele called back and asked me to call the highschool where Eli
goes to leave him a message. I used to be terrified of talking on the phone.
When I’m doing it for someone else, though, it’s not too bad.

The rest of the story.

Max asked me as we were in the kitchen, “Jonah, I need your expert female
advice on something.” Before the dubious expression on my face could break
into an audible reply, Nathan lashed out, “Better ask Stephanie or Jenifer.
Joanna’s the wrong person to ask about that!” I laughed because I hardly
consider myself worthy of giving advice on females, not to mention “expert
advice.” Max went on to say that he’d composed a poem to recite while
presenting Stephanie Stone (his date for the ring dance) with a flower, which
I assume is the corsage. He wanted my advice on what he’d written, wondering
if it was too flippant or not. Nathan continued jabbering, saying stuff
like, “Writing poetry will make you like Joanna, and you know how she ended
up.” I told Max to e-mail it to me if he wanted. I found it when I logged
on to send the stuff I’d already written. Steph came over to tell me not to
show it to Jenifer or Michele. I said I wasn’t planning on showing it to
anyone, which I’m glad about because Max seemed pretty uptight in the letter.
Then I think Steph got upset at me when I wouldn’t let her read it. Ah
well. It was a good poem, kinda long, formal like, but funny still. I was
impressed.

Eli and Michele are complaining on the phone to someone about a horse show
that the judges were wrong to Eli or something. I can’t send this until they
get off the phone, and I don’t want to leave the computer because I can’t let
anyone else read this or what I wrote to Max, and I can’t save it either.
Well, I suppose I could save it, but that would require KNOWING how to. And
I’m not really prepared for that.

Never let anyone tell you you can’t do something. Never accept anything as
impossible. If someone says you can’t do something, there may very well be a
reason why they’re saying it that will help keep you out of trouble if you
listen to them. Wisdom and restriction. One supposedly replaces the other.
But geniuses are just people that never grow up, right?

Question everything.

Freak. They finally got off the phone, AOL wouldn’t connect, and now
Michele’s on the phone again.

I’m picking my nose and noticing the tomato sause on my shirt. I hate
spilling stuff on my clothes. Somehow it always manages to be spaghetti
sauce. Made pizza tonight. I crumbled up a hambuger on one of them and
poured a bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflour, and carrots on the other. Eli
came in and whined, “Jonah, why are you putting veggies on there? Oh, good,
meat! This is my pizza, a man’s pizza.” “Eli,” I replied, “it takes a REAL
man to eat veggies.” That led to a discussion about George Bush’s policies.

Today was a happy day. I guess that’s the best adjective to describe it. I
slept in as long as the voices in the kitchen would allow. Nathan fixed me a
couple of eggs when I asked him. Michele was heading out the door this
morning when she asked, “Jonah? Do you have a burning desire to drive up to
Ft. Collins to pick up some ponies?” I thought for a second and answered,
“Yes.” It was a nice drive. Takes between 2 and 3 hours each way,
especially when Michele took a wrong turn. We listened to Rush Limbaugh, and
I read the paper to her, and we talked about my future. I told her I wanted
to travel around the world. She said that sounded like a good thing to get
out of my system and that it seemed a bit more appealing than law school.

I’ve got a couple of splinters festering nicely from working on the fence
yesterday, even if i did wear gloves most of the time.

Nathan and Eli are walking out the door doing impressions of Bubba, the
Bremer’s new ram. Actually it’s “Baah baah” but you’re supposed to say it
“Bubba.” He’s the black sheep of the family but really stupid and a darn
sight nicer than Boaz ever was. When he baa’s, it sounds more like he’s
belching than making any sort of pastoral music.

Duncan came home this evening and placed a backward baseball cap on his head
for some reason. We’re talking about a respectable lawyer and county
commissioner in a coat and tie who never does anything silly. Until now.
“Put on the faggoty sunglasses,” I suggested, handing him my pair. Then he
and Eli danced into the living area singing “Rolling with the homies.”
Except Duncan didn’t quite get it right and sang, “Rolling with the
hoenies.”

That led to Jefiner coming over and asking me quietly, “What’s ‘horny’ mean?”
Poor, Jef, she’s so clueless. Michele was telling us the other night about
her entimology class she teaches at the Air Force Academy. One of the guys
was talking about these four inch long beetles that live in a certain type of
tree in New Mexico. He said, “You step on them with your combat boots and go
stomp stomp stomp. And then they give you the finger.” We all laughed as
Jef says, “I don’t get it.” “Remember?” Steph tried to clue her in, “the
middle finger is bad?” “But,” replied the even more confused Jenifer,
“beetles don’t have fingers!”

I think I’ve got a sunburn where I burned before and peeled.

Basket still hasn’t had her foal, although she was acting pretty suspiciously
today. Michele left Steph in charge when we left to get the ponies.
Stephanie’s face had the look of responsible panic on it as we drove off.

Eli is posing in my faggoty sunglasses. heh. Michele is talking to someone
on the phone at the moment about horses or something and just said on the
line, “Sorry, my son just went gay.” Now Nathan is quoting the newest Weird
Al CD.

Ah.. phone’s free. Oh crud. Now Nathan’s got it.

Max came home for a bit today. We were in the kitchen and he said, “Oh,
Jonah, I need your expert female advice on something.” I’ll tell the rest
later. phone’s free.

ARGH! Well, with every mistake I make using windows, I learn something,
right? I gotta start thinking of it that way. What doesn’t kill you can
only make you stronger–Nietzsche. When discussing the hundred or so ways he
tried to design a light bulb that didn’t work, Thomas Edison said that those
weren’t a hundred failures but rather a hundred ways he’d now learned
wouldn’t work. He also said that invention was 1% inspiration and 99%
persperation. So I guess that makes inventors geniuses with a strong work
ethic. Or stubborn, one.

In any case, I copied all my new mail to a Compose Mail window, read it
offline, figured how to make the thing print properly (it was set to
“envelope.” DUH!), printed out something from Eric the Awful, and then tried
to get out of that window only to loose everything by exiting AOL! Okay,
okay. Learn. You learned, something, Jonah. Get a grip.

Anyway, I’ve got to get back on now and check to see what Geof has to say
about my webpage. I told Max I’ve got one. He seemed pretty impressed.
Max’s hero is the unabomber. He dislikes all technology, especially
complicated computer stuff, although he can maneuver around the web
successfully. He called last night from the academy while we were watching
Clueless to ask me what the name of it was. I told him but then said that it
wasn’t listed under anything, I didn’t think. I can’t remeber the address.
Geof put it up under the permanent place, and I forgot what it is. I wrote
Ben, but he hasn’t responded. Course, all i said was, “I think it’s written
on a scrap of paper somewhere around the computer.”

My life is written on scraps of paper. I have this habit of scrawling down
phone numbers on little slips and then coming back weeks later to find them
and wonder who the heck they belong to. When I was cleaning up my room
before leaving for here, I put all the scraps in a neat envelope sized box
that Melissa gave me a gift certificate to Books-a-Million in for my
birthday. Otherwise, I just stuff them into one of the top drawers of my
desk so I can shuffle through them in a panic when I need someone’s number
and didn’t write it on my handy dandy note card I keep folded in my wallet.

Everything comes to an end. Paths separate. Friendships fade. Closeness
ends with distance as people grow further apart by miles and interests.

My face is sunburned. That’s because I wasn’t restless today. We built a
fence. Jef, Nathan, Steph, and I started working on it this morning by
digging holes for fence posts, planting them, and drilling screws into two by
sixes to go along the top. When I talked to Dad tonight, he said, “I hear
y’all had an argument.” I answered, “_I_ didn’t argue. I was just
expressing my opinions which didn’t happen to correspond to other people’s.”
Nathan insisted we do it one way, while Steph was strongly suggesting we do
it another. I added my two bits’ worth, which resulted in Nathan driving his
car off in a huff. That left the three of us girls to operate an electric
screwdriver. Chalk that up as another bundle of learning experiences I had
today. The fence actually looks like crap, but I think it’s sturdy enough.
Michele came out to offer her suggestions–“No, that’s not level.” Then
Nathan finally reappeared much later with a slightly improved attitude. As
Steph said to him, “You need practice with this.” Personally, I think he
should never work in an environment that includes women.

We eventually got it all done, stringing hog wire along the posts and lacing
some to the gate. All this was in preparation for Basket Case, who is
preparing to foal any minute now. Michele insisted on near perfection,
saying, “A foal’s only successful skill is self destruction.” Basket is in
the small riding ring now with a pile of hay and wood shavings in one corner.

Nathan and Eli went to see Black Sheep at the dollar theater as per my
suggestion tonight. They invited me to go, and I do want to see that movie
(it’s got David Spade in it, my hero and the most sarcastic man alive), but
Jef and I had already rented Life Boat at Safeway. I enjoyed it. It’s a
Hitchcock version of a John Steinbeck novel.

Cool. Saw Clueless. Even better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My
vocabulary has increased dramatically. I want to see it again. Fortunately,
Jefiner guessed the trivia question correctly at Safeway, so we got to rent
it free till tuesday. Rent it free. heh. I guess if I get restless again,
I’ll watch it then.

When it was over, Michele asked if I was going to computerize my wardrobe.
Nathan was like, “Yeah, which pair of jeans goes with which t-shirt.” I
retorted, “Hey, it’s tricky matching t-shirts with flannel shirts!”

I’m addicted. Jef asked what I’d really like to do this evening when we were
trying to figure something out and all I could think of was getting on the
internet. Nathan and Steph went to get a shake earlier on. They invited us,
but to get out with them almost defeats the purpose. I dunno. I guess I’ll
go to bed. Everyone else has.

She ended up dating a non-highschool guy after all.